Los Angeles

After watching Ludo Lefebvre on Top Chef Masters I knew I wanted try out his food. Around the same time his episode aired he opened up a “pop-up” restaurant at Bread Bar on 3rd St. On Tuesday night a bunch of my friends and I went. Simply put the meal was amazing. It’s really a mixture of classical french food and molecular gastronomy. Onto the food.

The table that was supposed to be ours decided they wanted to sit and talk for a long time so we had to wait. To make up for this Ludo’s very nice wife brought us out some lobster medallions with daikon & rosemary with a honey-sherry vinaigrette. It was amazing and great indication of things to come. It looked like a scallop and the sauce was very strong and sweet so the lobster was mainly there for texture.

One of the best things about the meal was the butter for the bread. It was a homemade honey and lavander butter.

First came the chorizo soup with cantaloupe and cornichon. It really tastes like the essence of chorizo. It was perfect. When there was only a little left we almost fought over it like junkyard dogs.

It's sort of hidden.  You can't see it from the street and it's beneath a hotel that doesn't seem nearly as nice, the Hotel Carmel, that is.  It's called Chloe, the Westside complement to Laurie Mulstay and Ron Marino's stable of hot spots which include The Bar and Magnolia.  And it's not quite full.  But it's elegant, and hip, and calming in a way that makes you think you could go there to meet a business associate or a bed mate, and either would be a success. 

The Pimm's cup is the refreshing favorite. And the Lavender Gimlet is like a perfumed elixir that I swear makes you more beautiful with every sip.

This is like an April Fool’s Day joke; a BBQ joint write up by a vegetarian! There is a method to this madness. After all there’s more than one way to come at anything!

Here’s the theory; there are a lot of men out there who love BBQ. It’s such a manly man food. A lot of those manly men have wives, girlfriends, partners who are vegetarians. This makes going out to BBQ with their loved one difficult. Probably an adventure saved for boy’s night out. You know, after playing poker, shooting hoops, or screaming at TV skirmishes, they go grab a few ribs and some beers.

Ladies. I’m taking a page out of my book and handing it right to you. Want to make your hungry he-man happy, take him to Bludso’s BBQ and Bar on La Brea where you both will eat well and be happy. There probably won’t be any romance that night because he will be stuffed like the pig he just ate, but he will fall asleep with a bloated smile on his face and you will have won several gold stars! (To be cashed in later for jewelry, an i-pad, a weekend away with (or without) him or whatever your need might be at the moment.)

Los Angeles has the best Mexican food in the world.

An established foodie might suggest this claim be true, because of Los Angeles’ high end Mexican cuisine. Places like Casa in downtown or Mexico City in Los Feliz.

But I’m no foodie, so I’m not going to make that claim. I am just a dude who really enjoys regional Mexican food, and LA has got way more of it than any other place.

Without opening the census books, anecdotal evidence shows us that there must be a large percentage of Mexicans from Jalisco. Look at all the restaurants named Taquería Jalisco or Tacos Jalisco #2. This compounded with the prevalence of stickers for the Chivas from Guadalajara, proves my amateur research (Chivas’ MLS team is also based in LA.)

Jalisco like Michoacan, their paisanos to the south, has a propensity towards carnitas that delectable slow roasted pork dish. Carnitas end up everywhere, because this community is so large, and this regional Mexican cuisine has come to embody “Mexican Food” to gringos.